Opinion | Michael Collins: Why charging Mac Miller’s drug dealer does more harm than good. - NBCNewsTHINK
that increasing the severity of a sentence has no impact on the supply of drugs. Once a drug seller is arrested, the market simply replaces that person. Even more concerning, such laws can make drug users less likely to call emergency services if they believe they may be at risk of criminal prosecution.
Want more articles like this? Sign up for the THINK newsletter to get updates on the week's most important cultural analysis Indeed, many drug-induced homicide cases involve individuals who gave drugs to their friends or relatives. In 2014, Amy Shemberger bought heroin for her and her boyfriend, something she had done often. After her boyfriend overdosed and died, Amy was arrested and charged with drug-induced homicide. She isInstead of pouring funding into police and prison construction, we should be expanding naloxone distribution, increasing access to methadone and buprenorphine and opening safe consumption spaces.
Is the world a safer place because Amy is in prison? Will her incarceration result in a reduction in overdose deaths? The answer in all instances is almost certainly no and underlines the futility of such approaches. The case of Miller is still fuzzy,he bought drugs from his regular suppliers. He died in large part because the pills he bought contained fentanyl. Whether he or his contacts knew about the fentanyl is unclear.
Focusing on arresting drug users and low-level drug sellers perpetuates the drug war and does not reduce overdose deaths. As Northeastern law professorin 2017, America"has long held criminal punishment to be an antidote to drug-related harms, but the opioid crisis has laid bare the folly of this approach.
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